Terraflora

Mural, unrefined mineral pigments

Gladstone Hotel, Toronto

24’ x 10’ x 11’

A featured exhibition for Come Up To My Room and Design TO, 2019, Terraflora is an ephemeral mural throughout the third floor corridors of the Gladstone Hotel. Extracted from regional clays and soils, each pigment was hand-rendered to reveal a range of mineral colours of the Greater Toronto Area.

Terraflora is based on previous projects conducted in Ilhabela, Brazil and Rajasthan, India wherein natural colours were used to illuminate the growth of bacteria, fungi, algae, and lichens upon human-made structures. In this iteration, the artwork evokes those natural processes of growth and deterioration that would befall the hotel if devoid of human intervention.

The motifs painted appear like microflora; spores, moulds, and lichens appear to invade the space, emboldened by gestures, lines, and shapes made of the earth itself. The piece beckons one to consider the fragility of human systems in a natural world undergoing unprecedented change.

Unrefined pigments exhibit unique behaviours due to composition and interactions with surrounding compounds and atmospheric conditions. The result is a series of colours with distinct textures, opacities, and finishes.

Monument is the culmination of a five year process of collecting, pinning, and gilding insects found within and around domestic spaces. The use of gold draws attention to the beautiful and complex structures of the insect body - the veins in the wings, the textures of the thorax, the banding on the abdomen.

Arranging them in constellated patterns determined by maps made of the spaces where the bodies are found (light fixtures, window sills, nearby sidewalks, etc.) is a nod to particular relationships between animal science, mythology, economics, ritual, and the cosmos. (Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

Conversely, 'Monument' is an acknowledgement of the agency of the non-human world by drawing attention to the actual species that share and shape human habitats; it demarcates the passage of time shared between seemingly disparate animals - human and insect - to promote empathy and curiosity for the natural world at a critical time in history. (Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

Monument 1, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

(Image: Toni Hafkensheid)

The second iteration at the Art Gallery of Peterborough (pictured here) included new species collected throughout the course of the traveling project-run.

मिटटी सिटी | Mitti City

Collaborative artwork in partnership with The Open Space Society (TOSS), Uday-Waldorf Inspired School of Jaipur, Contree, and जयपुर मेरा शहर (Jaipur My City).

मिटटी सिटी | Mitti City (or City of Soil) is a collaborative public art project lead by Cole Swanson in Ramganj Bazaar, Jaipur, India. In association with The Open Space Society (TOSS), Uday-Waldorf Inspired School of Jaipur, and Contree, community members of various ages illuminated the biological activity on an historic rooftop in Jaipur’s old city.

Using only unrefined, locally harvested mineral colours, the bacteria, lichen, moulds, and fungi proliferating upon the rooftop’s surface were traced over a two-day period. The artwork muses on the agency of earthen media in forming and transforming the spaces in which human beings live.

Ramganj Bazaar is an historic, culturally complex community found within the walled city of Jaipur.

The untreated space exhibits a range of growth by various colonies of microflora offering an engaging opportunity to examine acutely the myriad of ways biological activity might transform a centuries-old stone substrate.

After an artist talk on past projects (Lecanora Muralis) and workshops in paint preparation and colour application, approximately thirty five community members responded to the biological activity present on the site using unrefined pigments designed to interact with microflora and dissolve/dissipate over time.

Photo credits: Hitesh Adwani, Megha Bhatnagar, Cole Swanson

Photo credit: Hitesh Adwani

Vendors within Jaipur’s walled city markets provided regionally-harvested pigments from local minerals.

Held in July, 2018, the project elapsed during the monsoon period in Jaipur. Light rains amplified colours before washing them away.

At the close of the two-day painting performance, heavy monsoon rains flooded the site demarcating the culmination of the collaborative artwork.

The Furrow, The Froth

Cattle bone and earth colours on wasli and watercolour paper

Inaugural installation, Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi

Jaipur, India

540” x 84”

Summer, 2018

A site specific installation made up of painted cut-outs from wasli and watercolour paper, The Furrow, The Froth examines the capacity for natural materials to determine form and engage aesthetic empathy.

The pigments chosen for the artwork evoke mythologies associated with furrows and fields. Cattle bone char (bone black) and various copper and iron oxide-based colours make up a limited palette of earthen hues.

Animal bone and earth pigments bound in gum arabic interact with and transform one another on hand-made, water-soaked substrates.

Once cut free from their supports, each shape contributes to a site-determined installation brimming with organic forms.

In each iteration of the artwork, new relationships between forms are achieved through automatic approaches to installation. The result is a mutable artwork that inhabits each space differently.

The linear organization of the installation at Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi evokes genealogies, script, musical systems, and notions of cause and effect.

For the first iteration of the artwork, a customary, ceremonial lamp was lit at the Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi. Special thanks to Dr. Rekha Bhatnagar for her guidance and organization of the project, and to Dr. Ashwin M. Dalvi (Chairman) and Shri. Vinay Sharma (Exhibition Officer) of Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi for their generous support.

Colony

The Living City, exhibition in partnership with Crazy Dames, The Toronto & Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), and Evergreen. Procurement: Colony Gate, permanent installation courtesy of the artist and the TRCA to Evergreen, 2017.

Presented through the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Colony is a study on the relationship between urban development, green-space construction, and animal colony habitation. This pieceexamines animal activity in Tommy Thompson Park including its massive population of double crested cormorants. A human-made space, the park hosts a highly intensified bird colony that has significant impacts on the area’s tree growth. Local researchers have worked tirelessly to introduce the colony to ground nesting sites, achieving notable success and averting plans to cull birds.

The soundscape of the shorebird colony has been captured and relocated to the historic chimney (1906) at the brickworks, a space wherein another bird species – chimney swifts – inhabits en masse in the warmer months. Through sound and interaction, Colony attempts to embody the complex issue of land use, population growth, and species cohabitation in a rapidly changing environment.

This video produced by the TRCA in partnership with Crazy Dames and Evergreen focuses on the research questions and methods undertaken to realize Colony for the Living City Exhibition. Video by Jamie McMillan, 2017.

For the installation, the inner chamber of the chimney was cleared and re-lined with brick made from the historic kilns of the Evergreen Brickworks. This provided a sound chamber that allowed field recordings to travel up into a 200 foot vertical space, and out the front gates to where the public would encounter the work.

Historic chimney gate redesign process; images from field photography shot of the nesting colony have been transformed into the laser-cut steel gate frames and fitted permanently into the brick facade of the chimney.

The steel frame has been reinforced by an oxidized copper mesh. The organic design of the expanded copper metal recalls the form of feathers and the blue-green colour is a reference to the striking hues of the cormorant's eyes and inner beak.

Lecanora Muralis

Lichen, earth and bone pigments on reclaimed wall

Casa Na Ilha Artist Residency, Ilhabela, Brazil

34.7' x 14.4'

July, 2017

Lecanora Muralis is a mural created at the Casa Na Ilha Artist Residency on Ilhabela, Brazil. Situated on a reclaimed colonial wall on the western edge of a protected area of Atlantic rainforest, the artwork is composed of undulating forms tracing the growth of lichens on the rocky surface.

The artwork demonstrates the transformative and generative forces at play as nature reclaims human-made structures. The piece is titled after one of many specific lichen found - muralis - named after the aesthetic qualities inherent to the organism's growth cycle.

Pigments were harvested from the island along the shoreline and the interior of the jungle. Bright red, orange, yellow, and lavendar ochres were processed from island soils. Bone black pigment, rendered from charred bovine bones - a by-product of the Brazilian cattle farming industry - supplement the earth palette. Without a binder present, the mural will slowly deteriorate as natural weather and biological systems interact with the wall surface.

Close inspection of the work reveals the multitude of species colonizing the wall surface. Micro-organisms feeding on organic material support more complex species in inhabiting the wall's architecture.

The state of Sao Paulo is rich in iron oxide soils that are harvested for a variety of industrial purposes.

Ninety days after its completion, the mural demonstrates aesthetic changes likely due to weather conditions, seasonal shifts, and biological processes between the microflora and the iron-rich media used in the painting. (Image: Tamar Granovsky)

Muzzle and Hoof, Horn and Bone

EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation, and Technology

In partnership with the Design Exchange

Unilever Detergent Factory, Toronto

September, 2017

Muzzle and Hoof, Horn and Bone examines the long and problematic relationship between humans and domestic animals, specifically cattle. The pieces express the dissonance between human conceptions of a ‘commodity species’ and the actual lives or experiences of these complex organisms. Launched as a part of EDIT, 2017 - an expo that positions art and design as possible contributors to a sustainable future - this collection of works muses on the agency of human-animal relationships in defining histories and futures based on critical thinking, ethics, and empathy.

Sacred Bone, latex paint on glass, Unilever Detergent Factory, 2017.

Believed by ancient Greeks and Romans to be the seat of the soul, the sacrum has been fashioned as an icon for the exhibition, a window through which the world outside of the factory can be contemplated. The city skyline, public infrastructure, industrial architecture, and spartan wild growth can be viewed through different sections of the installation. The work offers a counterpoint to the interior space of the factory in which cattle byproducts were processed to create the detergent soap exported by the Unilever company.

Image courtesy of Sandra Osonjik, 2017

He was a thing (left), Pastorale Bovinae (Day and Night, centre and right), and Sacred Bone (centre right).

This piece positions the listener as a bovine individual wherein multi-layered soundscapes of the cattle world emanates from the hollow horn crusts of a previously slaughtered animal. In this iteration, an evening soundscape produces sounds from insects, owls, distant trains, and the rhythmic sounds of cattle breathing.

A selection of abstractions in cattle bone char pigment (Bone Black, right) appear as meditations on the offcuts of animal industries.

He was a thing beckons viewers to circumambulate an industrial drum, filled with remnant detergent material from the bygone days of the Unilever factory. On the cylindrical form is an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953):

THERE WAS A FOOLISH AND YET DELICIOUS SENSE OF KNOWING HIMSELF AS AN ANIMAL, COME FROM THE FOREST, DRAWN BY THE FIRE. HE WAS A THING OF BRUSH AND LIQUID EYE, OF FUR, AND MUZZLE AND HOOF, HE WAS A THING OF HORN AND BLOOD, THAT WOULD SMELL LIKE AUTUMN IF YOU BLED IT OUT ON THE GROUND.

Alvearium I is an installation artwork using field recording, painting, and sculpture. The work transports the exhibition patron throughout ascending levels of an active bee hive. The visual, auditory, and olfactory output of the work is transformative; patrons are temporarily extracted from their human selves to inhabit a foreign, animalian space, drawing attention to the complex realm of other species typically absent from the contemporary human experience.

In the second iteration of Alvearium, the Toronto Design Offsite Festival and Craft Ontario curated the work as a function of the 2017 Living Well exhibition via architectural intervention. Interrupting the gallery's main entryway and atrium, the piece exposes patrons to the complexities of animal architecture through immersive multi-sensory engagements.

Kuckucksuhr is an architectural intervention that transforms the watchtower of Ontario Place’s Wilderness Adventure log ride into a cuckoo clock. Using seeds and light to beckon migratory bird species to the installation, Suddick and Swanson reimagine the passage of time in natural terms—rather than a robotic cuckoo, the migratory species that move through and feed off the structure come to represent seasonal and hourly cycles. Conceived as a critique of human conceptions of progress, Kuckucksuhr questions the human-made nature-scape of Ontario Place, reflecting on the desire to harness, subjugate, and represent nature. Re-signifying the watchtower as a space of natural transition and reclamation, Kuckucksuhr creates an opportunity for complex natural patterns of life to surface in an otherwise artificial environment.

The daytime function of the piece attracts mammals and birds with edible pine cone ornaments.

Species of moths common to the late summer cycle were commonly observed.

Edible pine cones were refreshed on alternate days to keep the piece active.

Kuckucksuhr was erected just prior to the annual blue jay migration along the shoreline in Ontario. On the final days of the exhibition, large flocks of jays were present to harvest food from the work. Photograph captured from inside the large watchtower.

KuckucksuhrCSwanson

It was anticipated that various species would claim the work for themselves. Squirrels and raccoons tore through the silk linings in search of foodstuffs stored within, while various birds and mammals ravaged edible materials across the work's facade.

Out of the Strong, Something Sweet

This large-scale installation artwork is a reference to the pre-modern belief that honeybees were spontaneously generated from cattle bodies in a vicious ritual called ‘bougonia.’ The literal and symbolic act of killing and burying cattle to repopulate mass honeybee losses appears throughout the ages in countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia. These ideas resonate in the present as we encounter similar anxieties around dwindling bee populations and unethical animal husbandry practices in industrial farming.

Twelve cells of the installation are filled with white sugar, the thirteenth with cattle bone char. In most refining plants, sugar is stripped of its colour when filtered through fragments of burnt cattle bone. Interestingly, this char is the primary pigment in ivory black (or bone black) paint, used in the series of abstract paintings showcased in the adjacent gallery. The skulls in the installation buzz with the sounds of honeybees living in the University’s on-site apiary; the din is punctured by the distant wail of spectral cattle, recorded in the fields of nearby farms.

Human participants move through the installation as if they were traversing both an industrial farming operation and circumabmulating a ritual space. Visitors unwittingly perform the honeybee 'waggle dance' a non-auditory form of communication between insects that redirects swarms to new sites for habitation.

All sugar from the installation was reclaimed and donated to the Honeybee Research Centre at the University of Guelph to support the living hives at the apiary.

Regina Mortem

Cattle horns, steel, wood, and field recordings, 2016

Images courtesy of Dean Palmer Photography

In Regina Mortem, two cattle horns are positioned like headphones. Emanating from their crust is the sound of queen bees vocalizing to one another. When the first queen emerges from her hive pod, she buzzes a musical note; the others who have not yet hatched answer her. The virgin queen finds them in their beds, and kills them with her stinger. There can only be one queen bee for every hive.

Bone Black

An exploration of pigments and their sources, the Bone Black suite explores the material roots of a specific colour. Derived from charred cattle bones, ivory/bone black yields a pigment that absorbs light evenly across its surface. These works attempt to connect the origin of the colour to the biological and metaphysical relationships shared between humans and the animal-object, consumer and consumed. Discarded from mainstream sales, bovine off-cuts - abstracted into geometric forms - evoke a more complex story than the global capitalist narrative allows.

Image courtesy of Dean Palmer Photography

Swarms

Works that explore parallels between swarming stars and insects pose as meditations on historical and cultural connections between animal species, science, and metaphysics.

Star Swarm (detail)

Cattle hide, brass, and steel pins, 7' x 6', 2014

Star Swarm (detail)

Cattle hide, brass, and steel pins, 7' x 6', 2014

Swarm

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 7.5' x 7.5', 2015

Swarm (detail)

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 7.5' x 7.5', 2015

Swarm (detail)

Cattle hide, pins, and paint, 7.5' x 7.5', 2015

Specimen Hides

This collection of miniature paintings investigates historical relations between species by engaging alternative presentation methods. Widely accessible as decorative throws, cattle hides are represented in miniature as entomological specimens. By destabilizing conventions of scale, materials, and orientation, these works question dominant consumption systems and their sociocultural antecedents. Opaque watercolour on wasli paper and entomology pins, 3" x 2", 2014.

Installation images courtesy of Dean Palmer Photography

Caulbearers

Dessicated cattle stomachs, beeswax, steel and concrete, 2015

Referring loosely to the pre-modern proposition that cattle bodies could bear forth honeybee swarms, this collection of fleshly veils concurrently references the belief that children born 'behind the veil' - faces obscured by remaining amniotic sacs - are gifted with a second-sight. The inclusion of bovine, bee, and human biological forms collapses a millenia-long process of coevolution embodied by contemporary species.

Images courtesy of Dean Palmer Photography

Tuesday Night Special

A map of a basic consumption system, the Tuesday Night Special is a well-known product within mainstream grocers in Canada. Deconstructed and gilt in 24 carat gold, this work attempts to identify the complexities of consuming the mass-produced animal body. A nod to both pre-modern ritual and contemporary economics, golden bones contain the biological relics of two species in a troubling state of co-evolution.

Red Earth

Red Earth is a large scale installation that celebrates the history and materiality of Jaipur's longstanding engagement with earth-based handicrafts. An expression of the Indian region's visual identity, earthenware forms serve countless functions for the city's residents. Once expired, terracotta is discarded to the streets without bestowing upon the earth the ill-effects of other industrially produced materials.

Red Earth is composed of used vessels, idols, and decorative objects from Jaipur's neighbourhoods, kumhaars (ceramic craftspeople), lassi shops, and nearby villages. Crumbling clay forms convey the cycle of human relations with the earth itself - a metaphor that participates within and beyond contemporary debates on consumption and waste. Once subsumed into the Madhyavarti open-air theatre's circular architecture, the stories and identities of people from different social spheres are recombined into an earthly space that reflects a condition of unity and shared experience.

Constellation

House flies, 24 karat gold, gold thread, and mica, 2012 - 2013

Living Arts Centre Gallery, Time and Place, Curated by Megan Press, Mississauga

Constellation is a mixed-media installation that investigates the materiality of time. Insect bodies reclaimed from domestic interior spaces were relationally mapped according to the position where each fell at the moment of death. Clear insect-wings gilt in 24 carat gold were installed in constellated patterns on the gallery walls. Constellation represents those intersections between multiple histories and biologies, animal and human, most often rendered invisible by the gloss of specific experience.

Constellations 2 - 4

House flies, 24 karat gold, gold thread, and mica

Constellation 1

Constellation 2

Constellation 3

Constellation 4

Constellation (detail)

Kala Bandar Identikits

In the spring of 2001, residents of East Delhi and Ghaziabad reported mass-sightings of a man-monkey hybrid locally called 'Kala Bandar,' or the Black Monkey. Emboldened by the presence of an impressive police task force and backed by a melange of supporters from local political and religious sects, residents of the Eastern districts took to the darkened streets to capture the beast. Sightings of Kala Bandar described increasingly fantastical human-animal-machine hybrid representations. These identikit images - produced as contemporary miniature paintings - illustrate possible manifestations of the cryptid, demarcating the socio-politico-cultural anxieties of the lower-socioeconomic classes plagued by the Black Monkey.

A large, metal claw

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

Transforming into a black cat

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

A bandaged thing

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

Wearing a motorcycle helmet

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

A cyborg with a motherboard

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

Springs on the feet for jumping

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

Cloaked in dark cloth

Opaque watercolour on wasli, 4" x 6"

2012

Parliamentary Cats Pressed Pennies

A collaboration with artist Jennie Suddick, these limited edition pressed-pennies celebrate the longstanding regional history of the cats of Parliament Hill. Each artist-made multiple includes the pressed penny, a collector's envelope, and a certificate of authenticity.